"To prove that I mean it when I say “four-way tie,” I’ll start with the last one, Kicking and Screaming, a movie I can recite from start to finish. You know, in case you’re ever in the mood for an hour-long party trick. Actually, I wrote an essay about my love for it for the New York Observer when the Criterion Collection released the DVD and raced to fill out the crossword puzzle like a regular dork. Two words: Broken glass. Meanwhile, Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan is a seminal movie for me and a whole bunch of other people of my generation. Speaking of party tricks, evoking empathy for Upper East Side WASPs is a good one. Same with Barcelona. The reason these four are grouped together is because of their supreme ability to capture the cadence of youth and young adulthood. They display floundering without being floundering. This is the hardest thing to achieve, in any format, and Linklater makes it look easy."

"I would probably say A Woman Under the Influence [for my fifth movie], although it’s a deep, deep tie between that and the movie Opening Night. And A Woman Under the Influence was, I think, more celebrated, but Opening Night might resonate more with me. It is a story about an actress coming to terms with aging and her mortality. I think I’m also really drawn to the way those movies were made, and you can kind of feel the hammer and nail that was used to bring the whole thing together in this way that’s sort of extraordinary and that you can just almost feel the effort made by everyone involved – which is what happens when you make any movie. But sometimes [it affects you] when you know that everybody’s friends were there and they’re all making food for people to eat while they’re making this movie, to make this movie, to tell the story, not to serve any bottom line, or anything other than their creative interests. [In Opening Night, writer, director, and co-star John Cassavetes worked with Gena Rowlands, his then wife.] You don’t always have that luxury. And I just am always very moved by the way they made their movies and what a family they were and what places they could go because of it, because of that intimacy, because of that ease and that history between them. They were able to do things that I don’t know that you could achieve or accomplish in any other fashion, you know?"

"I also love the movie Moonstruck. I just think, again, it’s so brilliantly performed. I think Moonstruck and Tootsie are perfect movies. Like, I can’t find a flaw in them, and I’ve watched them countless times. I just think that they are perfect films. And in Moonstruck, what they’re dealing with is death, and loneliness, and loving the wrong person, and a family tie, and infidelity. And yet, it’s the most charming, uplifting, happy movie. I mean, the soundtrack, the score. There’s a makeover in it. I mean, come on, I love a makeover. And again, you have New York, you have Brooklyn, you have this wonderful city. You have this culture of this Italian family. It’s just wonderful. And Nicolas Cage gives the most insane performance I’ve ever seen. When he is screaming about his hand in the bakery, I’m like, “What is that? Who does it that way?” Nobody would do that. Only Nicolas Cage would just scream at the top of his lungs, like, “I lost my hand! I lost my bride!” I marvel at the balls, and that performance just wrecked me. Then her, of course, smacking him — we’ll never forget it."